Yeah, I really can't think of a better way than to setup users as Contributors. I've used Dolphin CMS in the past and it provided a rather lightweight blog solution for users where the blog was integrated into the main site, utilizing the same theme. I just haven't seen anything like that for WordPress, myself.

Setup buddypress. Rename the Group component to Journal (there is a way to do this in wp-config, but I don't have the link handy right now).

Give members creation rights to groups. Then use the above plugin to allow blogging for groups. Find/replace through the code and rename user-facing instances of the word "blog" with the word "journal".

Change up the coding through so instead of Joining a group, they "Follow a Journal".

Users who choose to create journals can make the public or private and even invite people to read them.

Doing something like this will save you the big headaches of using multisite and all the weird variations you encounter between users. This method will also keep your social integration much tighter since users will simply be navigating on the one site and each user gets the additional social features that come with groups. Favored Journalers will have a lot of activity around their journal.

If you anticipate not ever have another use for groups, transforming the like this might be a good solution for you! I think this is a unique way of bending BP to your will and if you accomplish it, it will certainly be a good example to the rest of the dev community of the flexibility and power that exists in BP.

It may sound tough to do, but I can certainly visualize the workflow in making it happen.

Ask yourself if you really need groups. How big is the community? My community has grown to about 200 people and I still don't need groups (and I'm probably going to repurpose them into something else).

I'm thinking that if you have forums (BBpress plugin), you can bypass the need for groups, especially if you are under 1000 members.

It certainly is only a start-up with few members only but I put so much effort into the whole group creation already but yeah I will definitely give it some thought if it is really needed indeed... Users get confused with all these different elements of the site, tighter is likely better..

Thanks so much Saunt really gave me some stuff to think about :slight_smile:

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